


The Soul's Water

by Tyellas



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Disabled Character, F/M, Gen, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, Sad, Wretched life, a bit of YA-level postapocalyptic romance, bugs get eaten, mediocre soil science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 02:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8780194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: Trying to make a better Citadel leads to a trip to the stony ground. Down there, a Vuvalini finds something harsher than the Wasteland, and a former Wretch remembers another lost soul.A companion piece to Citadel Nights featuring Smith and the OC Rabbit, a Wife’s delivery to the Citadel, and a hint of post-apocalyptic romance against the restrictions of Wretched life.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TawniToxic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TawniToxic/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Citadel Nights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7560889) by [Tyellas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas). 



> A gift for TawniToxic who wanted an expansion on this snippet from [Chapter 10 (a genfic chapter)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7560889/chapters/17522038) of [Citadel Nights](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7560889). A young Wretch uplifted to the Citadel after the Sisters' takeover says:
> 
> _Among the Wretched there were girls and old women. If you were any good the Citadel would take you, like it took Des; if you were half-good, Gastown would. We were few enough that a man wanted to have me, once… He wanted to live with people, be someone. He was all right. Maybe I let him touch me, a little. But he tried the Mongrels’ fighting pits, the blood fights. If you lived, you got to be a Mongrel…_
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you to the awesome [Splinter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Splinter/pseuds/Splinter) for advance/beta reading.

Smith fairly leapt off the Treadmill when it hit the ground.

A few strides took her Vuvalini boots to the solid earth she’d missed. She stared around the base of the Citadel. In the Immortan’s time, this harsh, overcrowded place had been doomed to sterility. Now, the Sisters and the Mothers were in charge, determined to redeem everything they could. Today, Smith would help search for fertile ground near the Citadel, somewhere fit for the Dag to grow plants.

The idea of it thrilled Smith, even as it made her sad. The Keeper of the Seeds should have been there. Keep could have done it all: found the best ground, or something close to it, and shot down anyone who got in her way. But Keep’s bones were buried beneath stone and metal in a canyon pass. As things were, the job was split between Smith for the shooting and a Wretch who knew the Citadel’s surroundings. A former Wretch, Smith reminded herself. “Let’s do this!” she called.

Smith stretched her shoulders back, holding her rifle in front of her. She turned to her companion for the day. “It’s good to be on the ground. In a hundred and fifty days, I think I’ve walked out here…three times? Funny how we don’t make it down half as much as we plan to.”

“No,” her companion said.

Every time Smith descended, it was different. Today, the ground-dwelling crowds had thinned out. Some were up in the Citadel, now. Others had saved up water and struck out for fresh territory. Many who remained were building mudbrick huts in the slight shelter of the Citadel’s base. The foundation bricks were clumsy. The bricks higher up were crisper. Like all of them, Smith thought, learning how to be human again. Maybe, with the former Wretch, Rabbit, by her side, she’d learn more about the tribes down here.

Then again, Rabbit was quiet. So quiet that Smith often forgot she was there, to be startled by the rattle of Rabbit’s satchel, clinking against a water bottle on her belt. Smith looked down at her. She was young, slight, dark eyes creasing against the sun above a crude half-mask. “History and Corpus said you knew the ground, down here. You know where we’re going?”

Rabbit lisped, “Yeth.” She pointed, gently. They stepped down from the dusty road immediately, to the once-Wretched ground and its milling watchers.

Most of them stepped back for a Citadel sharpshooter. They passed through easily until they were halfway around the first tower’s base. That was when another woman, lean and bald with a sharp grin, barged up to Smith and started talking at her, fast. “Hey! How’y’doin? Got anything to trade? No? Aw, don’t hold out on me, they’re tight enough up there. Look, my teeth are goin’ loose.”

Smith felt a plucking at her elbow. Rabbit was tapping her, tilting her head back. Smith turned and caught another woman stalking them from behind, a tough, mangy blonde. She half-raised her rifle. “You got a problem?”

The blonde backed off. “Problem? Got no problem.”

Smith barked, “Then talk to me up front. One at a time!” Rabbit brought the confrontation to an end by skittering five meters ahead.

Catching up, Smith asked, “What was that about?”

Rabbit’s reply slid aside from an answer. “Thothe two were bad. Ssso bad they were sssent out from the Mongrelth.”

Suddenly, Rabbit stopped, right before a tempting area of shade. “Not that way.”

“You sure? The longer we stay in the shade, the stronger we’ll be later.”

Again, the girl’s reply was indirect. “You’re not like me. Not atthlicted.”

“What’s that?” Smith leaned over to try and hear Rabbit. The girl’s voice would be clearer without the mask, but Smith didn’t ask her to take it off. She’d seen Rabbit once or twice without it. She wished she hadn’t. The spindly girl had been Wretched for a reason, her face snarled and her voice lisped by a bad cleft lip. It was hard to look at her and not see it again, even with the mask.

“Leperth. They hath their camp in that ssshade. If we go through the Leperth, you might get sssick.”

Smith stepped away from the shade. “Mongrels…Lepers…Are these tribes that you’re talking about?”

“We had no tribeth. Only gangth.”

“Were you in a gang down here?”

“No.” She corrected herself. “Maybe, a little?” Then, Rabbit pointed again, to start off in a different direction. When she turned back to make sure Smith was following, her eyes were vast with worry.

Smith stopped asking questions.

But she thought she understood, now. It had been simpler in the Wasteland. You had what you carried. There were three ways to treat someone. They were your tribe, your family. They had a deal with you: you were both wary, but safe. Or you were in a fight for your life, each side battling for their gear and the meat on their bones. Whichever it was, you knew where you stood. The Wretched had lived under the Immortan’s hand at its cruelest, one of his resources, plucked up or flung away at his whim. His scant generosity had been the cruelest thing of all. It had given the Wretched something to fight about. Having a little, just enough to go on, in sight of relative plenty, had warped them. Smith eyed Rabbit with new wariness.   

Eventually, they had walked enough that they were outside the Citadel courtyard, going north. The Citadel’s shooting range was here. Beyond and around, the earth was sere, wind-scoured. “You think this is good ground? Looks pretty waste.” Smith kicked a rock. Perhaps it was for the best, after all, that Keep wasn’t here.

Rabbit said, quietly, “We are north of the Green Tower, where the water ith. It would be…sssimpletht…to get water from the ccCitadel to here.” Smith inhaled at a vivid memory, Keep saying _I look for the water first_. She had to blink back a sudden tear. Thankfully, Rabbit was looking everywhere but at her.

“I camped there, in the roctkh. Corputh wanted me to check here. It lookth good to him, from up there…” Rabbit sighed. “I’m going to do the ssscienthe now. Then we can go back. Ith that okay?”

“Sure, sure. Your call.” Smith kept her rifle half-hoisted as she watched. Rabbit began a series of actions. Fiddling with some priceless Before-time measuring tool, walking a counted number of paces, marking a slate, scooping up some dirt in a tiny glass jar, marking the slate again. Smith watched her repeat it. She realized the girl was going to do this for her entire satchel’s worth of glass.

Rabbit’s sheer focus made Smith twitchy. This ground was sending wrongness up through her boots, like a hot zone or a killing field. She yearned to fire off a few rounds at the shooting range. After the close calls earlier, Smith held on to her tension. Along with her ammunition.

Finally, Rabbit came to a stop in a darkened, trampled hollow of the ground. There, she paused. Something lifted her chest in a deep breath, made her bow her head. Smith scanned the waste land around. There was nothing she could see. But, then, she hadn’t survived here.

* * *

Rabbit recorded the last soil sample, taken from the darkest patch of ground, then spared a glance for her guard. Smith’s hopeful openness reminded Rabbit of another Wastelander. Rabbit never had learned his name: but he’d never spoken hers, either.

Smith didn’t seem to be watching her. It was the moment Rabbit needed to do what had haunted her. She took a deep breath, and let herself remember more.

How long ago had she met him? She unspooled the count of days before and after, and placed it about three hundred days before the Revolution.

It had started as another Wretched day at the base of the Citadel. Crowds and chaos, heat and dust, constant threats balanced against the hope of something better. Through a fluke, Rabbit and the child she was minding that morning had a good place to view the end of the Last Road. This was where voyagers made their offerings to the Treadmill. A Wasteland convoy had pulled up to do just that.

As its vehicles stopped, the convoy shed a few ragged hangers-on. They scattered to try their chances in the Wretched mob.  Rabbit clenched her charge in her arms, though she found the child heavy. One of the hangers-on turned their way. He was a good match for the Wretched around, his skin and hair battered into a raceless brown by the post-nuclear sun, his face bearded – and more. Rabbit caught her breath. He had the same mutation she did, a cleft lip. He followed the other newcomers off the road.

The Treadmill cranked down. Its ferocious guards gave their traditional challenge. When the convoy revealed their prize, the heights and ground alike came alive.  Up and down were united in one of the moments that livened Wretched life – a breeder being bartered into the Citadel.

The moment the woman was revealed, drums began to hammer.  Rabbit half-lifted her charge. “Look! They hath a woman for the Cccitadel. Ssshe’ll be a Wife.” Rabbit said this confidently. The convoy’s woman was so very beautiful. She had dawn-blue eyes, cloud-silver hair, fine-cut features: as out of place as moonlight in the dirty, noisy noon. The only thing paler than her skin was her clenched teeth. Her wrists were bound.

A cruel wind swiped sand across everyone. It whipped back the fraying hood of Rabbit’s anorak, revealing her head and her cleft lip. The child reached and tried to pull it back over Rabbit’s face. “Don’t look, don’t look at her! You’ll make her ugly like you!” Rabbit pulled her hood down. The words, a fact of life with her cleft lip and palate, had a stab, today.

The Treadmill came down a second time, laden with Citadel fighters: War Boys. They leapt down, shouting, bawling, kicking Wretches away from the Treadmill, but still they surged. The War Boys began to spread onto the road to protect the convoy. Rabbit knew a good time to leave.

She brought the child back to her people’s scant encampment, where flies buzzed around the treasure of a maggot farm. The little girl was exultant. “We saw a new Wife! We were right up front! I’m going to be just like her!”

Rabbit was paid for this mix of child-minding and good luck with a half-handful of _roasted_ maggots – the best kind. Roasting took their bitterness away, leaving only rich savour. They were so good, she ate them one by one, trying to munch discreetly.

Someone loomed over her. “J’eatin?”

Rabbit tightened with fear. It was the marked man who had come in with the convoy. He must have seen her exposed face and followed her. Up close, he was almost a head taller than Rabbit, and markedly broader. His deep voice was blunt.

“Nothing,” Rabbit breathed.

He took this in stride. “Where’d’ja get it?”

“I don’t know.” Rabbit surrendered the remaining few maggots before he could take them from her, holding out her hand.

He examined them with a chuckle and popped them into his mouth. The movement showed his twisted grill of teeth, and his awful upper lip, cleft on each side, a spare lobe of flesh below his nose. “Ttthankth. Y’r nithe.”

His words marked him again. Only two people had ever said _thanks_ to Rabbit, let alone _nice_ : the History People, from the Wasteland and the Before-time. Rabbit dared to say, “You. You ssshouldn’t talk about food much here. There’th not a lot. It maketh people angry.”

He made a listening noise. “Here for aqua-cola. For people.” He gestured at the Treadmill, now in the air, bearing up the moonbeam woman. He added, hopefully, “Wives!”

Rabbit couldn’t think of anything to say to that. “Bye.” She fled, zig-zagging through the crowd.

She only stopped at one of her mineral hiding places, behind one of the Citadel towers. It was an irony that one of her few possessions was a small mirror. She examined her face, comparing her cleft to the newcomer’s. He was definitely older than she was. But his eyes seemed younger.

It came to her that she had fled him from habit, not from real fear. She had reasons. During her Wretched life, friends and allies had died, or turned against her for her mutated snarl. The one who had made the most difference to Rabbit with her friendship and knowing, the History Woman, had been taken by the Citadel. Alone, Rabbit felt safe: but there was no finding food or water alone. Not any more. It was a small success to have survived talking to someone new. Their short conversation clung to her, a sheltering distraction, until she slept that night.

The next afternoon, Rabbit had a different shelter: listening to the ancient, tattooed History Man. His wit and his strangeness made him a name amongst the Wretched. Rabbit was one of a group around him. Her welcome in that circle lifted her from a pariah to an oddity. It showed she was fit to earn protein with a shred of dignity, watching a child or carrying a complex message. Sitting there, she felt safe enough to turn her mind from surviving to thinking. So, when the man like herself showed up again, Rabbit stayed collected.

The children who hovered at the edge of the circle vanished at the sight of him. Rabbit found she still wasn’t afraid. He was alive, though with some blood and bruising on one side of his face. Maybe the mouthful of protein from Rabbit had helped him survive the fighting inflicted on any newcomers. He had learned some wariness, staying a good ten paces back from their group.

Today, History had talked through the events of the Fall. Now, he was ranting about law and rights. “The great battle of the law throughout history has been equality. Who is a person? Who has the right to claim the land? The right to what’s underneath the land, like aqua-cola, and oil for guzzoline? When our ancestors, the people before us, did wrong, is it our responsibility to make it right?”  He paused and took in their expressions, from absorbed to baffled. Rabbit wondered if he, too, noticed the newcomer. History asked, “What are some of our laws here? One from each of you.” He pointed at Rabbit.

“You can’th make a ssshelter on the ground that you can’th ssshift. Or…”

The boy next to Rabbit interrupted, waving the bifurcated claw of flesh he had in place of a hand.  “Or the War Boys will stomp you! And don’t have a gun or the War Boys stomp you too.”

The youngster beside him, thieving Taf, smiled sly. “Watch your back or I’ll steal your stuff!”

History pointed at the final two. They looked healthy enough, but their small eyes folded as they struggled to think. Finally, one said, “When we’re here we do what you says. When we’re in a gang we do what the gang says. But all of us have to do what the Immortan says.” His twin chimed, “The Immortan!”

The boy beside Rabbit almost fell over as he shouted more. “If you don’t the gangs might get you first so the Immortan doesn’t get mad and stop giving us aqua-cola!”

“Well said. Anyone who’s new here should remember these things.” History had raised his voice as he glanced beyond their circle. Yes, he had seen the newcomer: been talking to him through them all, these past five minutes.

All the youths turned. Taf gasped. The man winked, pulled out one side of his mouth, and stuck out his tongue. The boys all laughed. The twins started making faces back at him. Rabbit concealed her own smile behind her hand.

Drums caught the edge of their hearing, rose louder. They all turned towards the centre of the Citadel, its Skullmouth cave. The man started at the electric sound of the tannoy crackling to life.

“ _Wordburger: speak of the devil._ Let’s see what our redeemer says today,” said History, sourly.  “Class dismissed.” The youths barely listened, scattering to try their chance at water or stealing from distracted listeners. The newcomer drew in to hear near Rabbit and the History Man.

Rabbit was too used to the Immortan’s beginning bluster to listen to it. The important part always came in the middle. The Immortan rasped, “Another Wife has come to me. She will bear a son to continue my work of redemption. I have decreed it! Witness and learn! Bring me tribute and be rewarded. Take my bounty and be strong. Offer unto me your children, and I shall raise them up. I am your…”

The newcomer caught Rabbit’s eye. “He y’r da?”

Rabbit had never been so surprised. “The Immorthan?”

His speech was impaired, like hers, but his laugh was whole, a chuckle from his throat. “No. Th’fella here.” He nodded at the History Man.

Rabbit shook her head. She had her own questions. “Where are you throm?”

“Yes, where _are_ you from?” History had turned back, peering at the new man.

Rabbit was relieved to fall quiet. History grilled the newcomer eagerly as the three of them went in the general direction of the water drop. “From the Hot Zone! That would’ve been Perth, in my day. That certainly explains…how’d you make it up here?” His mumbles were interrupted by History, asking about the far wastes, punctuated by wordburgers. _Pollution. Mortality rates. Desertification. Population crash. Tribalism. Road warriors._ “You need a vehicle for the last one,” History said. The newcomer chortled in agreement.

Taf whipped back to them, sauntering beside Rabbit as if he hadn’t just stolen something. History went on. “Now, you don’t dump quantities of water on sandy ground like some _wordburger: hydrological Zardoz_ without some of it sinking into the subsoil. But that’s good, because if we go over here – hello, Ratbag. No problem us going through?” History smiled forcefully at a rangy, redheaded man, his freckles sintered into something like a tan: a Mongrel on guard.

Rabbit hid behind History during the harsh banter that followed. The gist of it was that History and his young shadows could pass, but the newcomer couldn’t. He took this with a tired grunt and waved them on.

Rabbit touched History’s elbow and whispered in his ear: could they ask? History muttered, “ _Wordburger: pick your battles._ ” Rabbit knew him well enough to understand this: _no_.

Taf, close beside them, laughed. “Is the new bloke your husband? You’re prettier than he is! Is he gonna wife you?”

Rabbit snarled her own lip and hurried ahead. Why Taf’s teasing bothered her, when she regularly dodged rocks thrown her way, Rabbit couldn’t say. Worse, instead of chiding Taf, History was looking back thoughtfully at the man.

She slept badly that night.

The next day began badly, too. She missed her chance to mind a child – and earn food - by sleeping too late. Worse, what awoke her was a stabbing headache. Her open palate, and one ear infection too many, gave her migraines when the weather changed. This pain was strong enough that she had no doubt. There was going to be a storm. Rabbit went to tell the History Man.

She found him at his usual morning spot, swapping news with the legless watchman and bookie, Stebbins. The newcomer was with them, too. Rabbit felt lifted to see that he had survived a second night.

History strode out to meet her. He said, quietly, “That fellow’s all right, I find. Cagey about his name, but that’s par for the course, with these lost Wasteland souls. You could do worse. He’s not a bad idea. I’m not saying you have to! But if you want to then I don’t not want you to, if you take my meaning.”

With her killing headache, Rabbit didn’t. She wished, briefly, the History Woman was trying to make the point instead. She had to follow him back to the other two men to say what was important. “A ssstorm. A big one. Sssoon.”

History said, “ _Wordburger: just another day in Paradise._ Have you seen Taf anywhere? He was on the run earlier. Went off to pickpocket Meltdown, on a dare.” Rabbit gasped. This was all kinds of trouble. For Meltdown was the leader of the Lepers.  

“I was just joshin’ the kid. How was I supposed to know he’d take it serious?” Stebbins protested.

“He’s ready to be a young man – and that means he’s primed for a challenge.”

“He may hide. I know where,” said Rabbit.

The newcomer shifted. “‘ll go w’you.”

History raised an eyebrow. “You all right with company, Rabbit?”

“Yeth,” she said. She wasn’t going to eat today and her headache was blinding and Taf had gone to rile up _Meltdown_. Walking around with a newcomer who’d survived at least one fight? She could do worse.

Sure enough, together, they were left alone. If Taf was hiding, he was doing a good job of it. They searched until they were walking the Citadel’s northernmost side, behind the Green Tower. The stony plain to the north was bleak, but Rabbit pointed up at the massive stone tower. Here, where the sun met spare irrigation water, feral plants greened cracks in the Citadel’s cliffs. Rabbit felt her headache fade just to look at them. As the man made admiring noises, the cliffs and green darkened. It was the storm, a real toxic brute of one, stealing the sun as it rolled in fast and hard.  

Rabbit saw him seize with alarm. “Come on!” He followed her through the scree at the Citadel’s base, into a cluster of larger, tumbled rocks. Rabbit slid into one of her usual niches automatically. Until he followed her, she had not thought how tight it would be for two bodies. Since they were wedged side by side, Rabbit covered both their heads with her anorak. The pair of them held the garment in place as the storm howled in arrival.  

Rabbit found her free arm was resting lightly on his shoulder. His spare hand curled around her waist, rough and warm. They carefully avoided having their faces touch. To Rabbit, he smelled sharp and strange. Still, it was good to have someone to press against while the world shook and screamed around them.

He seemed to agree. Rabbit felt his hand steal along her ribs. She reached down to the rag bindings that netted her water bottle to her waist. But he passed that by, going up instead of down, to cup one of her scant breasts. Rabbit froze. Taf, History, this man himself had all anticipated what she hadn’t. Advice from the History Woman, that she’d never thought she’d need, raced through Rabbit’s mind. She weighed the fading safety that had been solitude against this new protection. Was she all right with company?

If this was the price of it –

Rabbit arched into him, slightly. And let his hands rove as he wished.

When the storm ended, Rabbit was nestled frankly in the man’s lap. It had been a long storm. Daylight was gone. They could hear enough to talk. If she could figure out what to say.

He made a statement first by digging into his gear and handing her Wasteland treasure: a small green piece of fruit. Rabbit stripped the meagre flesh from its stone before he could change his mind. She, in turn, handed him her water bottle. “Three,” she murmured. He gave it back after three swallows. Rabbit knew, herself, this would take the tight dryness away from a cleft mouth.

“’Y’r nithe,” he repeated. “Why y’not up?” He pointed upwards, towards the Citadel’s heights.

“Oh…my cleft mouth. They don’th like that.” Rabbit flinched at his next question, and her inevitable answer. It was the same for men, she told him, even if they could fight. If you weren’t a child, the Citadel would only take you if you were a full-life, perfect in every way. To soften this, she asked, “Where you were from, maybe it’th okay there?”

Immediately, she felt him shake his head. “Nuh-uh. No more.”

“Sssorry.” She leaned her forehead against his shoulder.

Red light stabbed the night. He moved the shielding anorak aside to peer towards it. Rabbit pulled the precious garment back to her, sliding her arms inside. They could both see a gathering in the waste ground north of the Citadel. He made a curious noise.

Rabbit leaned into his ear to explain. This was a storm night. Surviving it was one sign of strength, a reason to celebrate. So the mob called the Mongrels, the toughest of the Wretched, took these nights for their initiations. They always had water. Those who would be Mongrels had to win a fight, a blood fight, killing another Mongrel to take their place. Wretched who weren’t fighting clustered around, laying bets, ready to see someone else become the lowest of losers: the dead.

“Can anyone?”

Rabbit said yes, then realized what a mistake she’d made. For he moved her aside. She felt him stand, squaring his shoulders. She’d watched the History Man enough to know when a man was about to do something daring and stupid.

She tried to pull him back down with her. “You don’t hath to! I’ll...I’ll ssshare my aqua-cola with you again.” She plunged her memory to dredge up a Before-time plea. “Pleathe!”

He didn’t reply to her. Instead, he looked up into the darkness, to the top of the Citadel tower above them, where the Immortan was. Almost as if the Immortan was gazing down at him, man to man. He spoke that way, too. “It’th th’way, here.” He patted Rabbit down and pulled her hood up, tenderly. “You – here. “ His last words were mangled and mumbly, but they had a wordburger’s ring to them. Rabbit thought he might have tried to say, “Best chance I’ve got. I’ll be back.”

He slid out of their cluster of stones. Rabbit heard him crunch onto the scree. She could just see his shadow, chugging off to the Mongrel mob at a steady half-run.

Rabbit tried to obey. She stayed where she was, trembling, until she couldn’t. It wasn’t hard to follow him. But she had left it too long. The mob had him. She forgot fear for herself enough to run up to its edge.

The small fire in the circle’s centre made harsh shadows of the gathering mob. At the edge, a Mongrel woman stopped Rabbit. “Back off, kid, or you’ll get the bash.”

Rabbit covered her mouth with her hand and cringed. But she hadn’t been bashed yet. She dared to say, “I wath with him.” She pointed to where she had lost the man to the mob.

“They haven’t had a real mutant in a while. He’s going to be shredded.” The other woman curled her lip, then relented. “If you’ve got to watch, stand beside me. I’m blooded.”

Rabbit had stayed, paralyzed. The blood circle of the mob spread wider, so that everyone could see. It took all Rabbit’s courage to not close her eyes. Not when the Mongrels howled, accepting his challenge. Not when he stepped into the black, bloodstained patch of ground at the heart of the mob. Not until the very end…

Today, in the hammering sunlight and near-solitude, Rabbit looked down. This was almost certainly the spot where he had died. The Citadel’s revolution had swept Rabbit to the Citadel’s green heights. That revolution had come far too late for him. He had died as he had lived, a lost Wasteland soul. Still, perhaps this ground, fed with blood and bone, could be what the Citadel wanted. And she could keep her last promise to him.

* * *

Smith was on the cusp of breaking, asking Rabbit what was up, when the girl moved. She watched what came next in amazement. With the same absent focus she had given the dirt, Rabbit poured out her water bottle over the darkened ground. She gave it a shake, emptying it to the last drops.

Rabbit saw Smith and walked over to her. “I’m done here.”

Rabbit didn’t say a thing about the water. Was it science, or a sacrifice, or…

The girl’s eyes were blinking a little too quickly, sheltering a telltale gloss. Smith recalled the girl warning her when she needed it, the space around her own near-tears that gave her time to recover. She set aside asking. “Good timing. It’s heating up. We’ll go.”

Smith glanced back, once. The day was advanced enough that there was a heat mirage: the shimmer of false water, the shadow of a standing man. The illusion changed its angle to a vertical, going up, itself.

Then, it was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:  
> It seems that roasted maggots taste like bacon! Learn more [about this here.](http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2014/01/14/do-maggots-taste-like-bacon/) If you really want to. You don't have to. Be glad I didn't link to the 16-minute video I found about this.
> 
>  _Wordburger: hydrological Zardoz_ \- In the baffling 1970s postapocalyptic movie [Zardoz](http://io9.gizmodo.com/5787261/the-10-most-befuddling-scenes-from-the-sean-connerys-dystopian-sexcapade-zardoz-nsfw/), guns are thrown to a savage populace from the mouth of a giant floating head. A scene strangely evocative of the Immortan's largesse, sending water down from the mouth of a giant skull cave. 
> 
> Did this work? Did they find fertile ground? Corpus has the results of the soil analysis in another story of mine, [A Handful of Dust](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4456166).
> 
> Thank you readers, especially if you put up with this wierdest notes section EVER.


End file.
